Thursday, August 20, 2009

The U.S. does not have as much social mobility as Horatio Alger would have you believe. Equal opportunity is an important social goal, at least it is to me, and to the extent that this indicates unequal opportunity, it is of concern. Why is social mobility within the U.S. lower than in many other countries?:

Social mobility, by Daniel Little?: We often think of the United States as a
place with a lot of social mobility. What exactly does this mean? And is it
true? Ironically, the answer appears to be a fairly decisive "no." In fact,
here's a
graph from a 2005 New York Times
series on income mobility that shows that the United States ranks second to last
among Great Britain, US, France, Canada, and Denmark when it comes to the rate
of income improvement over four generations for poor families. And here are two
very interesting recent studies that come to similar conclusions -- a
report
on social mobility by the Center for American Progress and a 2007 academic
study by
researchers at Kent State, Wisconsin and Syracuse. Here is how Professor Kathryn
Wilson, associate professor of economics at Kent State University, summarizes
the main finding of the latter study: “People like to think of America as the
land of opportunities. The irony is that our country actually has less social
mobility and more inequality than most developed countries” (link).

Basically social mobility refers to the likelihood that a child will grow up
into adulthood and attain a higher level of economic and social wellbeing than
his/her family of origin. Is there a correlation between the socioeconomic
status (SES) of an adult and his/her family of origin? Do poor people tend to
have poor parents? And do poor parents tend to have children who end up as poor
adults later in life? Does low SES in the parents' circumstances at a certain
time in life -- say, the age of 30 -- serve to predict the SES of the child at
the same age?

The fact of social mobility is closely tied to facts about social inequality and
facts about social class. In a highly egalitarian society there would be little
need for social mobility. And in a society with a fairly persistent class
structure there is also relatively little social mobility -- because there is
some set of mechanisms that limit entry and exit into the various classes. In
the simplest terms, a social class is a sub-population within a society in which
parents and their adult children tend to share similar occupations and economic
circumstances of life. It is possible
for a society to have substantial inequalities but also a substantial degree of
social mobility. But there are good sociological reasons to suspect that this is
a fairly unstable situation; groups with a significant degree of wealth and
power are also likely to be in a position to arrange social institutions in such
a way that privilege is transmitted across generations. (Here are several
earlier postings on class;
post,
post,
post.)

A crucial question to pose as we think about class and social mobility, is the
issue of the social mechanisms through which children are launched into careers
and economic positions in society. A pure meritocracy is a society in which
specific social mechanisms distinguish between high-achieving and low-achieving
individuals, assigning high-achieving individuals to desirable positions in
society. A pure plutocracy is a society in which holders of wealth provide
advantages to their children, ensuring that their adult children become the
wealth-holders of the next generation. A caste system assigns children and young
adults to occupations based on their ascriptive status. In each case there are
fairly visible social mechanisms through which children from specific social
environments are tracked into specific groups of roles in society. The
sociological question is how these mechanisms work; in other words, we want to
know about the "microfoundations" of the system of economic and social placement
across generations.

In a society in which there is substantial equality of opportunity across all
social groups, we would expect there to be little or no correlation between the
SES of the parent and the child. We might have a very simple theory of the
factors that determine an adult's SES in a society with extensive equality of
opportunity: the sum total of the individual's talents, personality traits, and
motivation strongly influence success in the pursuit of a career. (Chance also
plays a role.) If talent is randomly distributed across the population, rich and
poor; if all children are exposed to similar opportunities for the development
of their talents; and if all walks of life are open to talent without regard to
social status -- then we should find a zero correlation between parents' SES and
adult child's SES. So, in this simple model, evidence of correlation with SES of
parent and child would also be evidence of failures of equality of opportunity.

However, the situation is more complicated. Success in career is probably
influenced by factors other than talent: for example, personal values, practical
interests, personality qualities like perseverence, and cultural values. And
these qualities are plainly influenced by the child's family and neighborhood
environment. So if there is such a thing as a "culture of poverty" or a "culture
of entrepreneurism", then the social fact of the child's immersion in this
culture will be part of the explanation of the child's performance in adulthood
-- whatever opportunities were available to the child. (French sociologist
Didier Lapeyronnie makes a point along these lines about the segregation of
immigrant communities that exists in French society today;
post,
post.) So this is a fact about family background that is causally relevant
to eventual SES and independent of the opportunity structure of the society.

But another relevant fact is the sharply differentiated opportunities that exist
for children and young adults from various social groups in many societies,
including the United States. How is schooling provided to children across all
income groups? What kind and quality of healthcare is available across income
and race? To what extent are job opportunities made available to all individuals
without regard to status, race, or income? How are urban people treated relative
to suburban or rural people when it comes to the availability of important
social opportunities? It is plain that there are substantial differences across
many societies when it comes to questions like these.

Education is certainly one of the chief mechanisms of social mobility in any
society; it involves providing the child and young adult with the tools
necessary to translate personal qualities and talents into productive activity.
So inequalities in access to education constitute a central barrier to social
mobility. (See this earlier
post for a discussion of some efforts to assess the impact of higher
education on social mobility for disadvantaged people.)

And it seems all too clear that children have very unequal educational
opportunities throughout the United States, from pre-school to university. These
inequalities correlate with socially significant facts like family income, place
of residence, and race; and they correlate in turn with the career paths and
eventual SES of the young people who are placed in one or another of these
educational settings. Race is a particularly prevalent form of structural
inequalities of opportunity in the US; multiple studies have shown how slowly
patterns of racial segregation are changing in the cities of the United States (post).
And along with segregation comes limitation on opportunities associated with
health, education, and employment.

So the findings mentioned above, documenting the relatively limited degree of
social mobility that currently exists in the United States by international
standards, are understandable when we consider the entrenched structures that
exist in our country determining the opportunities available to children and
young adults. Race, poverty, and geography conspire to create recurring patterns
of low SES across generations of families in the United States. (See an earlier
post on Douglas Massey's analysis of the mechanisms of race and inequality
in the US.) And limited social mobility is the predictable result.

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"Social Mobility"

The U.S. does not have as much social mobility as Horatio Alger would have you believe. Equal opportunity is an important social goal, at least it is to me, and to the extent that this indicates unequal opportunity, it is of concern. Why is social mobility within the U.S. lower than in many other countries?:

Social mobility, by Daniel Little?: We often think of the United States as a
place with a lot of social mobility. What exactly does this mean? And is it
true? Ironically, the answer appears to be a fairly decisive "no." In fact,
here's a
graph from a 2005 New York Times
series on income mobility that shows that the United States ranks second to last
among Great Britain, US, France, Canada, and Denmark when it comes to the rate
of income improvement over four generations for poor families. And here are two
very interesting recent studies that come to similar conclusions -- a
report
on social mobility by the Center for American Progress and a 2007 academic
study by
researchers at Kent State, Wisconsin and Syracuse. Here is how Professor Kathryn
Wilson, associate professor of economics at Kent State University, summarizes
the main finding of the latter study: “People like to think of America as the
land of opportunities. The irony is that our country actually has less social
mobility and more inequality than most developed countries” (link).

Basically social mobility refers to the likelihood that a child will grow up
into adulthood and attain a higher level of economic and social wellbeing than
his/her family of origin. Is there a correlation between the socioeconomic
status (SES) of an adult and his/her family of origin? Do poor people tend to
have poor parents? And do poor parents tend to have children who end up as poor
adults later in life? Does low SES in the parents' circumstances at a certain
time in life -- say, the age of 30 -- serve to predict the SES of the child at
the same age?

The fact of social mobility is closely tied to facts about social inequality and
facts about social class. In a highly egalitarian society there would be little
need for social mobility. And in a society with a fairly persistent class
structure there is also relatively little social mobility -- because there is
some set of mechanisms that limit entry and exit into the various classes. In
the simplest terms, a social class is a sub-population within a society in which
parents and their adult children tend to share similar occupations and economic
circumstances of life. It is possible
for a society to have substantial inequalities but also a substantial degree of
social mobility. But there are good sociological reasons to suspect that this is
a fairly unstable situation; groups with a significant degree of wealth and
power are also likely to be in a position to arrange social institutions in such
a way that privilege is transmitted across generations. (Here are several
earlier postings on class;
post,
post,
post.)

A crucial question to pose as we think about class and social mobility, is the
issue of the social mechanisms through which children are launched into careers
and economic positions in society. A pure meritocracy is a society in which
specific social mechanisms distinguish between high-achieving and low-achieving
individuals, assigning high-achieving individuals to desirable positions in
society. A pure plutocracy is a society in which holders of wealth provide
advantages to their children, ensuring that their adult children become the
wealth-holders of the next generation. A caste system assigns children and young
adults to occupations based on their ascriptive status. In each case there are
fairly visible social mechanisms through which children from specific social
environments are tracked into specific groups of roles in society. The
sociological question is how these mechanisms work; in other words, we want to
know about the "microfoundations" of the system of economic and social placement
across generations.